


while the walls come tumbling down

by WithYourRhythm



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Thieves, Getting Back Together, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Post-Break Up, Spies & Secret Agents, Yakuza
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:35:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28462488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WithYourRhythm/pseuds/WithYourRhythm
Summary: Right across the cell, outside of the iron bars trapping him in, a face he hasn't seen for years stares back at him. Kakashi feels his breath leaving his lungs in a rush and he manages to whisper out, "Obito.""Hello, Kakashi." His ex-boyfriend offers a mischievous grin, the wrinkles of the scars at one side of his face deepening. "It's been a while."Or,Thief exes get back in the game. The world better be ready for them.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Nohara Rin & Uchiha Obito, Hatake Kakashi & Uchiha Obito, Hatake Kakashi/Uchiha Obito
Comments: 7
Kudos: 79





	while the walls come tumbling down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kaiba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaiba/gifts).



> This is my gift for Azuzel23 for the Secret Santa event on The Kakashi Lounge Discord server! Happy new years, I hope you like this <3<3
> 
> Fic name from 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World' by Lorde. Unedited.
> 
> Enjoy~

Here's the thing: Kakashi doesn't trust anyone. Not to the old lady selling drugs at the corner store across the place he rented just for this month, nor to the teenager living next door who has been going out for morning runs every single day so far, and definitely not to the unnamed, unknown men that send money to his bank account with the intention of hiring him for simple tasks- the ones that aren't fully legal.

He never trusts others. That's why he's still alive in his line of work.

And here's another thing: Kakashi doesn't mess around with his colleagues. It wouldn't end well, this much he knows, so he keeps his hands clean from that madness.

That's how he works. They're not exactly the rules that he follows, but more like his guide for staying alive. It's a system he set up for himself: He follows a schedule that only he knows, takes jobs seemingly random enough to keep the police off of his trail, jumps between countries every few weeks.

It gets the job done. He knows what he's doing.

...which is why he doesn't take the call from an old phone number from his past. He hasn't even been aware that he still had that number memorized until his phone flashes with the incoming call.

The call ends, then the phone rings again, and again. After the third one, it stays quiet.

Kakashi ignores the heavy feeling in his gut. He forgets the call, and goes back to his assignments.

It doesn't end there.

\--

The next time he gets another call is a week later.

He's done with the last job early- he leaves the place he rented empty, preferring to take on another client that asks him to go abroad instead.

It's a simple one, this time. He's supposed to slip inside a museum, grab a few fancy pieces and replace them with fake ones. His new client doesn't give him a due date, so he decides to take more time to look up the security system- and maybe take a few days to relax. It's been a while since he had a break. He debates whether he should think of taking some time off after this.

While he's looking up the museum's security system on the computer he rented for an hour in a random library, his phone starts vibrating again.

It's the same old number. He almost wants to punch himself for the way his heart misses a beat.

Instead, he pulls his jacket's hood to shield his face more. No one is paying attention to him, but suddenly he feels like he's nineteen again, stepping into the college building for the first time with a newly bought eyepatch and surgical mask that itches on his face. Like everyone is watching him once again, whispering about how strange he is with his face almost fully covered, and that weird silver hair he has  _ -it must be dyed, isn't it?- _ as well as the painfully obvious stagger in his steps. How strange he is, how  _ fascinating  _ in the eyes of all those people, when all he wants is to dig a hole and stay in it for the rest of eternity.

He puts his phone in silent mode and buries it deep in his pocket. By the time he checks it again, it's been several hours and there are four missing calls.

He deletes his call history and exits from the library as if the ground under his feet doesn't feel like quicksand.

\--

It starts happening more often. Kakashi changes his phone over thirty times and his number even more so during the next two years for his job, but somehow, he always ends up seeing that number on the screen.

He gets used to ignoring it until the call ends. Not even once does he refuse the call. He tries to, a few times, but his fingers refuse to work on his phone screen. They even dare to wander close to the green button, urging him to answer. It feels like his body is betraying him, somehow.

He changes to burner phones, one time. It's a rough time for him, an old client of his tries to rat him out, but this is not his first rodeo and it's a bumpy ride, but he gets out of the country soon enough anyway.

The calls stop only then.

It takes several plane tickets that he doesn't use and him faking his own death, but he manages to slip away to the other end of the world and go back into the business once again. He buys a new phone after the danger passes. The calls continue on, as if the caller never had to take a year long break.

_ He didn't change at all, _ something whispers in his mind.  _ Still as stubborn as a mule. _

He accepts a new client. It's an easy honeypot mission to catch a cheater, for an unreasonably good price. He receives the first half of the payment beforehand and thinks,  _ it's good to be back. _

\--

The one to break the stalemate is the caller, of course. It's always him.

It happens like this: Kakashi goes undercover to find a woman in an old-style ball. He even ends up wearing a tuxedo, all fancy and prettied up like a peacock. His hair dyed to a casual brown tone, his ear piercings gone, the scar on his eye hidden behind a simple medical eyepatch- he doesn't even have his mask. His face feels heavy with all the fake skin he had on to hide his scars in a natural look.

He feels oddly vulnerable. It's been so long since he last took off his mask. The feeling sits heavy on his chest.

This is nothing he hasn't done before. His new client is a little out of his league, because doing dirty business for rich people always is so, but he works for everyone as long as they can offer a good enough reason and somehow a decent price. This time is no different.

He slips inside with a forged invitation, easily made after stealing an example by hacking one of the party organizators' laptop. He doesn't have a plus one, which might be suspicious considering the fact that almost all young men around his age have one, but he'll manage. The odds aren't that bad so far- he even settles on a bar stool at one side of the huge ball room without attracting any unwanted attention.

Of course, things go south fast.

For the record, it's not his fault. It rarely is when something goes wrong during his assignments- but plans never survive through enemy contact in his career, so he's used to it.

So here's how it really goes: Thieves raid the place.

It's like a joke- what kind of luck does Kakashi have to be stuck between thieves and the police? He should've never gotten out of the bed this morning. This is such a mess- and he just faked his own death, too! This job was supposed to be his turnaround!

Somehow, he ends up locked in jail, waiting to be interrogated by the police. The authenticity of his invitation is debatable at best, so it's no surprise for him that it failed to pass a thorough examination.

The problem is that he isn't exactly sure how he will escape from this…  _ lovely _ situation, that is him being detained in a police station until his invitation can be investigated properly. He has no plans of spending the rest of his life in jail while the badged folks find out about the rest of his illegal deeds and lengthen the time he'll be trapped in prison.

He can call a favor from one of his old  _ friends, _ but he doesn't want to be indebted to those creepy assholes. He can pull a jailbreak for himself with a few colleagues too, but if his face decorates the news for the next few months, he'll be out of jobs right away. Maybe he can stage another fake death for himself, now that he's thinking about it-

"Finding you is easier than getting you to answer your phone, isn't it?" A pleasant voice says, deep and soft, just ahead him. Kakashi clenches his fists as he looks up, seated on the cold bench of the decently-sized cell he's in.

Right across the cell, outside of the iron bars trapping him in, a face he hasn't seen for years stares back at him. Kakashi feels his breath leaving his lungs in a rush and he manages to whisper out,  _ "Obito." _

"Hello, Kakashi." His ex-boyfriend offers a mischievous grin, the wrinkles of the scars at one side of his face deepening. "It's been a while."

\--

And it goes on like this:

"-and I told you to stay back and cover for me!" Obito rages as he's hacking the computer of one of the most dangerous men involved with yakuza. "We'll get caught because you're a bitchy partner, is that it?"

"Don't care, like hell I'll let you have all the fun." Kakashi rolls his lone eye, eyeing the door to make sure no one steps in. It'll be fine.

Probably.

"Oh my god, I hate you so much." Obito says, then grabs a flash drive from one of his many pockets as he continues ranting. "You're so useless, no wonder you keep getting caught. Without me to break you out of that jail, what would you even do? Rot in prison?"

"You were the one who planned the raid that got me caught." Kakashi replies mildly.

Obito gives him a dark smile with all teeth and bloodthirst. "Well, fuck you."

_ Been there, done that, _ a voice that is strangely similar to Obito's says in Kakashi's head, but he ignores it to glance at the computer screen. The download is halfway done already.

"Can you tell me why we're doing this, again?" He says at last. "Because I feel like we're just running towards our inevitable demise right now and being told 'just follow my lead' isn't very reassuring."

Obito stays silent for a moment, looking away from the computer to study his face. "You really don't know?"

Kakashi shakes his head. The tone of Obito's voice… He doesn't like it.

"Kyoto heist." Obito's eyes focus back on the screen, but Kakashi can see that his fingers are trembling. "I finally found out what happened there. It wasn't bad luck, Kakashi- we were  _ sabotaged." _

Oh.

_ Oh. _

"Rin's death wasn't an accident." Obito voices what's in both of their minds. "Our plan was perfect, but someone wanted her dead and we were collateral damage."

The Kyoto heist was supposed to be the peak of their career, once upon a time. They were going to rob a rich guy, someone that built his entire empire on bloodied money and lived on happily while corpses littered behind his back.

Kakashi wasn't a loner back in those days, like he is now. Fresh out of college, he had been with Obito and Rin, all young and determined.

Kyoto heist had became their group's downfall, instead.

Those days, they just took on the jobs with decent backgrounds. If there was someone committing crimes, they would rob them back; the modern Robin Hood, Rin used to make fun of this little party they had gathered.

The heist was a big failure, though. Rin had died, Kakashi had lost his eye, and Obito's left side was crushed under a column when he had pushed Kakashi out of its way.

It was a disaster.

After that, everything had fallen apart. Their team broke up- not that tere wasn't much of a team left behind without Rin anyway, and Obito and Kakashi… their fights could've been heard from the other side of the world. They were grieving, angry; the world was their enemy, and that included each other after the days they spent with Rin gone.

Dating since college, spending years in each others' embrace, proposing during one of the jobs they took that leaned more to the dangerous side, and all of it had crumbled down in one night.

What a shame it is that Kakashi hasn't gotten over an event that had happened decades ago. Kyoto heist is what he still sees in his nightmares; he's bad at coping, always has been, but it must be a new record to not be able to forget such an old accident.

"Who…" His voice cracks, so Kakashi takes a moment to pull himself together and tries again. "Who did it?"

Obito turns his head towards him, his glare full of hateful delight. "Yakuza didn't like us trying to rob their man." He shrugs, a tilted grin stretching on his face like a knife slash. "So now I'll steal everything they have and tear them apart."

Kakashi feels his heart skip a beat. His hand twitches, wanting to reach out and cup around Obito's cheek like he used to do back in the day, before everything fell apart.  _ "We." _ He says instead, his lone eye crinkling with the answering smile on his face. "We will tear them apart."

Obito's smile wavers,and Kakashi fears for a second that he said the wrong thing, messed up yet again, but then a scarred hand reaches out to his own and curls around it gently. The smile comes back full force, this time with a hint of fondness hidden behind it. "We will."


End file.
